When did globalisation start?

“GLOBALISATION” has become the buzzword of the last two decades. The sudden increase in the exchange of knowledge, trade and capital around the world, driven by technological innovation, from the internet to shipping containers , thrust the term into the limelight. Some see globalisation as a good thing. According to Amartya Sen, a Nobel-Prize winning economist, globalisation “has enriched the world scientifically and culturally, and benefited many people economically as well”. The United Nations has even predicted that the forces of globalisation may have the power to eradicate poverty in the 21st century

Others disagree. Globalisation has been attacked by critics of free market economics, like the economists Joseph Stiglitz and Ha-Joon Chang, for perpetuating inequality in the world rather than reducing it. Some agree that they may have a point. The International Monetary Fund admitted in 2007 that inequality levels may have been increased by the introduction of new technology and the investment of foreign capital in developing countries. Others, in developed nations, distrust globalisation as well. They fear that it often allows employers to move jobs away to cheaper places. In France, “globalisation” and “délocalisation” have become derogatory terms for free market policies. An April 2012 survey by IFOP, a pollster, found that only 22% of French people thought globalisation a “good thing” for their country.